Serhiy Batyuk

Testimonial published in 2020. Roles and career details reflect the account at the time it was written.

I graduated from ATEP in 1978, in group ATEP-195. After university I worked at the Kyiv Institute of Automation and later at private companies, including Logicon in Ukraine and ControlTech in the Czech Republic. At the time I wrote this account, I was Technical Director at Klinkmann-Ukraine, supporting the distribution of global brands: Unitronics programmable logic controllers from Israel and Wonderware industrial SCADA software from the United States.

I have also taught at ATEP and established the Software and Hardware Automation Laboratory, focused on programmable logic controllers. At the time of this account, I taught part-time at the department, covering Engineering Calculations in Automation, Programming for Process-Control Systems (Automated Technological Complex Simulation), and Automation of Technological Processes and Production. My father, who taught in the department throughout his professional life, brought me to ATEP. I love my profession and have never regretted choosing it.

What matters to me about our field is its pragmatism: a continuing, balanced combination of fundamentals and modern practice, reflected in the bachelor’s programme title, “Automation and Computer-Integrated Technologies”.

Automating technological facilities is a classical engineering discipline. Our specialisation is grounded in automating thermal-power processes; heat and mass transfer underlie industrial processes and production. Automation is essential to the efficient and safe operation of thermal-power equipment.

A process-control system is a software-and-hardware complex that gives process operators tools to manage the facility. It can turn that facility into an automated technological complex (ATC), supervised by people or capable of operating without continuous human intervention. A modern ATC is a computer-integrated, cyber-physical system using programming, the internet and databases. That is the modern side of our field.

In my view, cyber-physical ATCs lie at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution unfolding in post-industrial economies. The goal is a fully automated, even robotic, “smart” enterprise. Its tools include computerisation, programming and connecting management systems through the internet. I also linked this direction with Germany’s and the European Union’s Industry 4.0 priorities and the United States’ Computer Science for All initiative, which I described as treating programming as a fourth basic communication skill alongside listening, speaking and reading.

ATEP instructors, researchers and senior students were actively supporting these ideas in theory and practice and introducing them into the curriculum through lectures, laboratory work and computer workshops.

Our field is neither young nor old, but mature: it brings classical automation together with modern control technology. Automation will remain necessary wherever technological facilities operate. In the progression I describe, regulators and relays were earlier tools; computers, controllers, programming and networks were the modern ones, while expert systems, robots and machine vision might come next. The tools change, but automation continues.

I see three practical reasons to choose this specialisation: graduates can find work at enterprises with thermal-power processes; the work stays interesting because its tools keep evolving; and the combination of theory and modern computing can be applied in other advanced industries.

I sincerely invite ambitious, adaptable young people—and their supportive parents—to consider the bachelor’s programme in Automation and Computer-Integrated Technologies at ATEP, KPI’s Thermal Power Engineering Faculty. Let us advance the ideas of Industry 4.0 and Computer Science for All in Ukraine together!